Ferguson Protests Take New Edge, Months After Killing

FERGUSON, Mo. — At the police station here, protesters stepped slowly into a line of officers in riot gear in order to be arrested. Along a rainy avenue not far away, a small group sat down in the street until half a dozen of them were taken into custody. Others unfurled banners inside City Hall in nearby St. Louis, chanted in a shopping mall, demonstrated at a political fund-raiser and marched through fog in the early morning hours to a university campus, a small number pledging to stay there all night, perhaps longer.

These carefully staged events, one by one on Monday across the St. Louis region, made up the largest and most organized acts of civil disobedience in the two months since a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown.

While the early confrontations between young demonstrators and the police were sometimes fierce, with rocks hurled and tear gas fired, the latest demonstrations were reminiscent of an earlier generation’s civil rights protests. And in fact an older generation was here. Cornell William Brooks, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., who was still wearing dress clothes from an earlier event, was in the crowd that marched for more than an hour overnight to the campus of St. Louis University. And Cornel West, the professor and author, was among 43 people, including religious leaders, arrested outside the Ferguson Police Department, where he told the line of officers, “We’re here because we love the young folks.”

But as a St. Louis County grand jury considered whether to bring charges against the officer, Darren Wilson, it was uncertain whether this “weekend of resistance” signaled a lasting shift in the way demonstrators would pursue their call for racial equity and changes in policing.

In a sports arena at St. Louis University on Sunday night, some younger protesters, part of a group that had appeared night after night for sometimes rowdy protests here, called out to the older faces on the stage, demanding to be heard. Some of them were invited to the stage, and the exchanges led to reflections later in the evening.

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Protesters on their way to the Police Department.CreditWhitney Curtis for The New York Times

“I think that sometimes older folks, we get caught up in what’s proper, what looks right, what sounds right,” the Rev. Renita Lamkin, a local pastor who has been active in the demonstrations and was arrested on Monday, said in an interview on Sunday. “And it doesn’t matter out there. Society isn’t right, and it’s not pretty. It is ugly, and it does make you cuss. It’s cuss-worthy.”

Kareem Jackson, a rap artist and community activist whose stage name is Tef Poe, said some “organizations on the national level come here and they believe that this is the usual ‘Kumbaya,’ ‘we’re mad,’ ‘we’re angry,’ ‘we’re sad,’ have a candlelight vigil and then, when it’s all said and done, name a highway after the victims.”

He added later: “They’re using tactics that come from a different generation, and it got the results that those tactics are capable of getting. At this current moment we believe that you need a little bit more.”

Mr. Brooks, the N.A.A.C.P. president, said he understood the generational divide.

“The split is as old as the country,” he said. “When I was that age, I thought the same thing.”

By Monday evening, the authorities were reporting a total of at least 50 arrests on charges that included “refusal to disperse” and “peace disturbance.” No injuries were reported, and officials noted that the protesters, in some cases, were openly asking to be arrested.

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Cornel West, the professor and author, was among dozens, including religious leaders, who were arrested at the department. “We’re here because we love the young folks,” he said.CreditCharles Rex Arbogast/Associated Press

“Arrests were not made until protesters started bumping police officers’ shields and eventually forcing through the police skirmish line,” a police spokesman said.

The planned day of civil disobedience, which organizers said was patterned after “moral Monday” demonstrations that began last year in North Carolina, started in the early hours of Monday, as hundreds of marchers made their way to a clock tower at St. Louis University and announced they were staying. Their numbers had dwindled to about 25 by dawn.

The university president, Fred P. Pestello, said in an open letter that the school “had no prior knowledge that this action would take place.” He added that “it was our decision to not escalate the situation with any confrontation, especially since the protest was nonviolent.” St. Louis University, a Jesuit institution of over 13,900 students, is holding midterm exams this week.

By late morning, religious leaders from around the country and protesters, including Mr. West, were locking arms and making their way down a main street in Ferguson and to the Police Department. As they arrived at the department, which has been the scene of testy protests since Mr. Brown’s death, the religious leaders of numerous faiths stepped forward to a line of waiting police, offering to “take their confessions” and pray with them. An outline of a body was drawn on the ground — a reminder, organizers said, of Mr. Brown but also of the scores of other people killed by police officers.

Some here spoke of Vonderrit D. Myers Jr., a black teenager who was killed Wednesday by a white off-duty police officer working on a patrol for a private security company. The St. Louis police have said Mr. Myers used a stolen handgun to fire on the officer, but Mr. Myers’s supporters have said he was not carrying a weapon.

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Protesters marched in the streets of St. Louis on Monday, in a series of demonstrations that began in the early hours of Monday.CreditScott Olson/Getty Images

Other protesters spoke of John Crawford III, a 22-year-old who was fatally shot by the police in Ohio in August after picking up an air rifle in the aisle of a Walmart store.

“Black lives matter!” the crowd chanted. “All lives matter!”

The arrests were calm as clergy members and others said they wished to meet with Ferguson police officers inside the building, then stepped forward after saying they were prepared to be arrested if they could not.

Hours later, at City Hall in St. Louis, demonstrators arrived and presented demands that included a meeting with the mayor, Francis G. Slay, and measures they said would promote police accountability, such as body cameras. “We will close this place until our demands are met,” Kennard Williams, the protest’s leader, said.

Mr. Slay’s chief of staff, Jeff Rainford, told the protesters they would receive an audience with the mayor. “We will, I promise you, be listening to you,” Mr. Rainford told Mr. Williams. “You will be part of the discussion and part of the debate.”

Mr. Williams said protests would resume at City Hall if municipal officials did not agree to the demonstrators’ requests.

As night fell, more demonstrations took place at three Walmart stores, at a National Football League game in St. Louis and outside a political fund-raiser for a county executive candidate.

Correction:

A headline on an earlier version of this article misstated the location of a protest and sit-in at St. Louis University. It was St. Louis, not Ferguson, Mo.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Ferguson Protests Take New Edge, Months After Killing. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe